Vinegar, Vinegar, Vinegar!

I am a huge fan of vinegars of all sorts. I have a decent collection of vinegars ranging from Barrel-Aged Balsamic, to Rice Wine Vinegar, to your plain old Apple Cider among others. Last night, I decided to make a balsamic marinated grilled pork chop with sauteed cole slaw. Both had…you guessed it, vinegar. This is a super easy dinner to make, just allow 30 minutes for the pork chops to marinate in the balsamic mixture.

For the pork chops, the marinade goes something (I never measure) like this:

In a plastic freezer bag, add your pork chops then add

1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 table spoon of seedy mustard

1 table spoon of pureed garlic

1 teaspoon salt

Let this sit for 30 minutes and make sure to flip it over 15 minutes in so that both sides get all the goodness.

The cole slaw was simple. Most supermarkets have ready bags of cole slaw handy. I bought a bag of chopped cabbage and a bag of broccoli slaw because they didn’t have the conventional cole slaw bags handy…and I love broccoli slaw.

I added the slaws in a pan and drizzled olive oil.

Let it cook down, until it is soft…about 3 minutes.

Then add about 3 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar.

A dash of salt and pepper to taste.

For something extra, I baked some small tomatoes with olive oil and kosher salt at 350 degrees while the other things were cooking. This way we felt full from the meal without having to eat carbs.

The pork chops and the slaw took approximately 6 minutes (although I cooked my chops on my Foreman Grill, so cooking times may vary).

Fabada Asturiana

Having lived in Miami for most of my life, I grew up eating amazing Cuban food. I’m a big soup person, and this was one of my personal faves. Fabada Asturiana is actually a Spanish soup stew made with white beans originating from the Spanish area known as Asturias.

I have never made Fabada, so this was new to me. Living in Los Angeles makes it a bit difficult to find common ingredients in Cuban/Spanish cooking, so there are a few ingredients missing. On a side note: if anyone can tell me where to get blood pudding in LA, hit me up.

Back to the stew, I went to Food 4 Less, because I know they have ham hocks and salt pork…as Trader Joe’s and Fresh and Easy do not (shame on them). I got a chorizo which I thought was hard enough…you see, another problem in LA is that supermarkets sell Mexican Chorizo and not the harder Spanish Chorizo. I thought this one was hard enough that it wouldn’t fall apart in the pot. I was wrong. As I was getting the ingredients ready, I grossed out my husband by showing him the ham hocks and the salt pork. With a disgusted look on his face he said, “I don’t want to see this stuff now. Just cook it and show it to me when you’re done.”

I chopped up the salt pork (about 2 oz) and one link of chorizo and sauteed them with one ham hock, half an onion and olive oil. When I noticed the casing of the chorizo shrinking, I took them out fearing I’d get the chorizo meat all over the place (I will tell you later on what I did with it).

I added some garlic, cumin, sweet paprika, salt and pepper, along with 2 bay leaves for a few minutes before adding 10 cups of water. I then added the beans. I used a combination of 2 cans butter beans and 1 can of great northern. I have never seen a fabada with butter beans, but when I was reading a recipe in the market for fabada, it called for them.

I personally think I overdid the water, so I let the soup boil uncovered to reduce and thicken the stock for a few hours. During this process, I added a couple pieces of chorizo back into the pot for flavor. Luckily, the chorizo did not fall apart.

You can also add potatoes to this stew. I did not because I was on a time constraint and didn’t have time to peel potatoes, but I definitely will next time.

Pork Spare Ribs

I don’t know why we don’t cook ribs as much as we do. I think we totally forget about ribs as an option and go with tri-tip or fish instead. This weekend we headed over to Costco to stock up on things when I saw a giant slab of pork spare ribs. These ribs were so large they sort of reminded me of that scene in the opening of the Flintstones… You know what I’m talking about right? When Fred and the bunch drive over to a drive-in and the waitress piles on some dinosaur ribs on their car and it tips over?

Well, they were THAT big (okay maybe not that big).

I ended up having to cut the slab in half and saved the other half for another weekend since it was just too much for the both of us and at $14 total, it was a really great deal (we even had leftovers).

When barbecuing ribs, there is an important question you need to ask yourself before starting to cook them:

DRY or WET?

In this case, we started off dry and it ended wet. You may be thinking to yourself, “What happened? Did your ribs fall in the pool while you were transferring them to your plate?”

The answer is, “NO.” In fact, I am unfortunate enough not to have a pool…although we have a little tiny pond in our backyard that is really a glorified in-ground bucket full of tepid water.

What we did do to our ribs, was that we started out with two dry rubs: A pork tenderloin seasoning which is pretty salty and a bbq seasoning I bought last year on a trip that is sweet.

Both rubs were rubbed onto the ribs, which had been patted dry beforehand.

The ribs were bbq’ed for approximately 35 minutes and were basted with bbq sauce periodically for extra flavor.

So…technically the ribs were wet, but they started off dry. Either way, they were delicious.

Barbecued Buffalo Burgers

I recently went to Trader Joes and perused the frozen food section. I found some frozen buffalo burger patties and I instantly became curious. I’ve never had buffalo and I love burgers…so why not try it out?

Firstly, let me just I’m not particularly fond of frozen burger patties…I always think of big barbecues and people slapping them on to the grill straight from the package with no seasoning, no nuthin! The end result: a burger with no flavor. You sort of stand around all the other guests, eating a basic ground beef patty with no flavor BUT ground beef and dry bread…You try to drown it in ketchup and mustard and mayo, but it doesn’t help. It makes your bread soggy and the patty slides all over the place. You become sad inside and start thinking about becoming vegetarian.

I refused to let this happen to me…not with my first buffalo experience!

I bought a bottle of barbecue sauce, Jack Daniels BBQ Sauce, to be exact.

I also bought some Yuca Croquettes as sides instead of French Fries. I thought this would be a nice compliment…Yuca is a typical ingredient in Cuban cooking. I grew up on Yuca. Fried Yuca is exceptionally good especially with a side of garlic dipping sauce. The croquettes were not as crispy as the Yuca Fries would be but they were just as delicious. You can pick these up in the frozen food isle in the Goya section or you could try to make your own with a Yuca Root…but that could be a lot of work!

I added some adobo to the burgers beforehand and then we added the bbq sauce as we were cooking them.

They turned out to be extremely delicious and contrary to what I’ve heard, did not taste gamey.

I would definitely buy them again.

Garlic Sausage with Spaghetti

Yesterday, we went to the farmers market in Los Angeles. While there, we decided to pick something up for dinner. We ended up buying some garlic sausage from a butcher. They had a nice variety of sausage but I decided I wanted to incorporate pasta with it and the garlic seemed like a good companion.

I decided to chop up the sausage in bits so it could cook quicker and I simmered the sausage bit in Chardonnay wine. After a few minutes of that, I added 4 cloves of garlic finely chopped and half a red onion also finely chopped. I added sliced mushrooms and grape tomatoes at the very end, since they cook quicker. I cooked this uncovered so the wine would evaporate.

 I made spaghetti and topped the spaghetti with the sausage mixture. Then drizzled the dish with olive oil and some italian herbs. Then we topped it off with some parmesan cheese and voila…a great meal.

 Who would have known these little piggies would taste so good?

Sausage Bites

Pork sausage with Kashkaval Cheese and Jasmine Rice

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of sausage. I rarely ever make it. I always thought of sausage as byproducts from some poor animal stuffed in an inedible casing. Lately, I’ve noticed when I go to the gourmet market, that there are a lot of appetizing varieties of sausages and I just had to try it out. Maybe my judgement on sausage is completely wrong…Maybe this could change my mind. Maybe my whole outlook on sausage will change. Maybe…Just maybe!

I ordered a pork sausage with kashkaval cheese. I didn’t know what kashkaval was, but I knew it sounded very exotic and it’s always good to try out new things. I had absolutely no idea how to prepare the sausage, so I just went along and made this recipe up with what I had in my fridge. I have to tell you, this was a well performed culinary experiment. The outcome was extremely delicious!

Cut the links of the sausage into smaller bites. This ensures that it will cook quicker.
Finely chop a yellow onion and some garlic.
Add the onion and garlic to a pan with olive oil and a dab of butter.
Cook the onion until translucent.
Add the sausage bites and cook until browned.
While cooking, add about half a cup of Pinot Grigio and let it cook itself down. The wine will infuse itself with the sausage.
Add some fresh sprigs of thyme and a few rosemary leaves.
Salt and Pepper to taste.

To accompany the sausage, I made some jasmine rice.

I have to tell you, after you finish cooking this dish, you’ll notice such a great aroma. It’s so aromatic and tasty! Wine and cheese always work together, and cooking this pork and cheese infused sausage with wine was really the right move.